2002 Bowman Baseball

Contents

The single series set was released in two different hobby boxes. The regular hobby boxes had 24 packs of 10 cards. Each pack had a Gold parallel card and game used/autographed cards were seeded at approximately 1 per box. The jumbo boxes came with 12 packs, 21 cards in each pack. The odds of pulling a game used or autographed card remained about 1 per box from the packs, but the boxes had exclusive Future's Game Autographed Base relic. The jumbo HTA boxes also had a 2002 Bowman Autographs card as a box topper.

Base Set: 440 cards. The focus of the set is primarily on prospects and rookies only approximately 110 of the cards feature veterans. The cards feature a similar design to previous Bowman entries, red trimmed veteran cards and blue trimmed rookie and prospect cards. In this particular year Bowman did not include an additional foil rookie label thus the prospect cards and rookie cards look identical. This set shared a lot of pictures with the other 2002 Bowman products, but have some very good photography including a rare picture of Roger Clemens batting for the Yankees.

The base level parallel card is the Gold parallels that were seeded 1 per pack that did not include a relic/autographed card. These Gold cards are identical to the base set except they are printed on slightly thicker stock (acting as a decoy for the Game Used cards) and have a gold fascimile signature rather than a black one.

An additional partial parallel skip numbered set was also produced. These cards were not distributed in packs and could only be redeemed for special exchange cards that were inserted into packs at approximately 1 per box. Topps has stated that 672 of these sets were produced.

These cards feature autographs from a large number of prospects. The pictures on the card fronts are identical to those of the 2002 Bowman relics cards for players who appear in both sets. However, this set is expanded and has some top names in the game including Mark Prior, Roy Oswalt, and Chase Utley.

These cards were inserted at varying rates depending on the series and were also inserted as a box topper in the HTA (jumbo) boxes.

One of the insert sets in 2002 Bowman, these cards feature game used bat chips or jersey swatches of some the game's top prospects at the time. Note that most of the players have not made much of an impact at the major league level.